Carl (or Karl) Friedrich Benz (; born Karl Friedrich Michael Vaillant; 25 November 1844 – 4 April 1929) was a German engine designer and automotive engineer. His Benz Patent-Motorwagen from 1885 is considered the first practical, modern automobile and the first car to be put into series production. He received a patent for the motorcar in 1886, the same year he first publicly drove the Benz Patent-Motorwagen.
His company Benz & Cie., based in Mannheim, was the world's first automobile plant and largest of its day. In 1926, it merged with Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft to form Daimler-Benz, which produces the Mercedes-Benz among other brands.
For his achievements, Benz is widely regarded as "the father of the car", and as the "father of the automobile industry".Fanning, Leonard M. (1955). Carl Benz: Father of the Automobile Industry. New York: Mercer Publishing.
Early life Carl Benz was born Karl Friedrich Michael Vaillant on 25 November 1844 in Mühlburg, Grand-Duchy of Baden, today a part of Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. His presumed birth house is remembered with a memorial at Rheinstraße 22, although the original building was demolished in the 1950s to make way for additional car lanes. He was the "illegitimate" child of Josephine Vaillant and Johann Georg Benz, a locomotive driver, whom she married a few months later. According to German law, the child acquired the name "Benz" by legal marriage of his parents.1844. november 25-én Karlsruheban született Karl Friedrich Vaillant Karlsruheban született Karl Friedrich Vaillant, a Benz autógyár alapítója. Mivel születésekor anyja még hajadon volt, ezért az ő neve után anyakönyvezték. Vaillant csak később vette fel apja nevét, a Benz-et.Realname:, Karl Friedrich Michael Vaillant. Birthdate:, 25 November 1844. Death-date:, 4 April 1929. Birthplace:, Germany, Baden-württemberg, Karlsruhe ... When he was two years old, his father died of pneumonia,http://www.zeno.org/nid/20007927983 Benz, Carl Friedrich: Lebensfahrt eines deutschen Erfinders. Die Erfindung des Automobils, Erinnerungen eines Achtzigjährigen. Leipzig 1936, S. 13–17 and his name was changed to Karl Friedrich Benz in remembrance of his father. The Benz family was Lutheran in faith.
Despite living in near poverty, his mother strove to give him a good education. Benz attended the local school in Karlsruhe and was a prodigious student. In 1853, at the age of nine, he started at the scientifically oriented Lyceum. After he graduated, he studied at Karlsruhe's polytechnical school under the instruction of Ferdinand Redtenbacher.
Benz had originally focused his studies on locksmithing, but he eventually followed his father's steps toward locomotive engineering. On 30 September 1860, at age 15, he passed the entrance exam for mechanical engineering for the Karlsruhe polytechnical school, which he subsequently attended. Benz graduated on 9 July 1864, aged 19.
Following his formal education, Benz had seven years of professional training in several companies, but did not fit well in any of them. The training started in Karlsruhe with two years of varied jobs in a mechanical engineering company.
He then moved to Mannheim to work as a draftsman and designer in a scales factory. In 1868, he went to Pforzheim to work for the bridge building company Gebrüder Benckiser Eisenwerke und Maschinenfabrik. He later went to Vienna for a short period to work at an iron construction company.
Benz's first factory and early inventions (1871–1882) In 1871, Benz joined August Ritter, in launching the Iron Foundry and Mechanical Workshop in Mannheim, later renamed Factory for Machines for Sheet-metal Working. Karl Benz's life as described on daimler.com
The enterprise's first year went poorly. Ritter turned out to be unreliable, and the business's tools were impounded. The difficulty was overcome when Benz's fiancée, Bertha Ringer, bought out Ritter's share in the company, using her dowry.Mercedes-Benz, Home of Mercedes-Benz Luxury Automobiles at www.mbusa.com
On 20 July 1872, Benz and Bertha Ringer married at the St. Michael's Lutheran Castle Church in Pforzheim. They had five children: Eugen (1873), Richard (1874), Clara (1877), Thilde (1882), and Ellen (1890).
Despite the business misfortunes, Benz led in the development of new engines in the early factory he and his wife owned. To get more revenue, in 1878 he began to work on new patents. First, he concentrated on creating a reliable petrol two-stroke engine. Benz finished his two-stroke engine on 31 December 1879, and was granted a patent for it on 28 June 1880.
While designing what would become the production standard for his two-stroke engine, Benz patented the speed regulation system, the ignition using sparks with battery, the spark plug, the carburetor, the clutch, the gear shift, and the water radiator.
Benz's Gasmotoren-Fabrik Mannheim (1882–1883) Problems arose again when the banks at Mannheim demanded that the Benz's enterprise be incorporated due to the high production costs it maintained. They were forced to improvise an association with photographer Emil Bühler and his brother (a cheese merchant), to get additional bank support. The company became the joint-stock company Gasmotoren Fabrik Mannheim in 1882.
After all the necessary incorporation agreements, Benz was unhappy because he was left with merely five percent of the shares and a modest position as director. Worst of all, his ideas weren't considered when designing new products, so he withdrew from that corporation just one year later, in 1883.
Benz and Cie. and the Benz Patent-Motorwagen
+ 1885 Benz Patent-MotorwagenThree wheelsTubular steel frameRack and pinion steering, connected to a driver end tiller; wheel chained to front axleElectric ignitionDifferential rear end gears (mechanically operated inlet valves)Water-cooled internal combustion engineGas or petrol four-stroke horizontally mounted engineSingle cylinder, bore 116 mm, stroke 160 mmPatent model: 958 cc, 0.8 hp, Commercialized model: 1600 cc, hp,
Benz's lifelong hobby brought him to a bicycle repair shop in Mannheim owned by Max Rose and Friedrich Wilhelm Eßlinger. In 1883, the three founded a new company producing industrial machines: Benz & Companie Rheinische Gasmotoren-Fabrik, usually referred to as Benz & Cie. Quickly growing to twenty-five employees, it soon began to produce static gas engines as well.
The success of the company gave Benz the opportunity to indulge in his old passion of designing a horseless carriage. Based on his experience with, and fondness for, bicycles, he used similar technology when he created an automobile. It featured wire wheels (unlike carriages' wooden ones)G.N. Georgano Cars: Early and Vintage, 1886–1930. (London: Grange-Universal, 1985) with a four-stroke engine of his own design between the rear wheels, with a very advanced coil ignitionG.N. Georgano and evaporative cooling rather than a radiator. Power was transmitted by a belt to a counter-shaft with a differential, from each side of which a roller chain transmitted power to that side's rear wheel, which ran loose on the rear axle. The 1885 version was difficult to control, leading to a collision with a wall during a public demonstration.
Benz continued to work on his Motorwagen and on 29 January 1886 he submitted the patent application for an "automobile fueled by gas". He first tested it on public roads in the early summer of 1886 and drove it publicly on the Ringstrasse in Mannheim on 3 July 1886. He received patent number 37345 in November 1886 (the date given for a patent is the application date) and the vehicle henceforth became known as "Benz Patent-Motorwagen".
The next year Benz created the Motorwagen Model 2, which had several modifications, and in 1889, the definitive Model 3 with wooden wheels was introduced, showing at the Paris Expo the same year.
Benz began to sell the vehicle (advertising it as "Benz Patent-Motorwagen") in the late summer of 1888, making it the first commercially available automobile in history. The second customer of the Motorwagen was a Parisian bicycle manufacturer Emile Roger, who had already been building Benz engines under license from Benz for several years. Roger added the Benz automobiles (many built in France) to the line he carried in Paris and initially most were sold there.
The early 1888 version of the Motorwagen had only two gears and could not climb hills unaided. This limitation was rectified after Bertha Benz drove one of the vehicles a great distance and suggested to her husband the addition of a third gear for climbing hills. In the course of this trip she also invented brake pads.
Bertha Benz's long-distance drive
The world's first long-distance internal combustion automobile trip was undertaken by Bertha Benz and their sons Eugen and Richard (with Eugen driving) using a production version of the Model 2. On the morning of 5 August 1888 Bertha – supposedly without the knowledge of her husband – took the vehicle on a trip from Mannheim to Pforzheim to visit her mother, taking her sons Eugen and Richard with her. In addition to having to locate pharmacies along the way to refuel, she repaired various technical and mechanical problems. One of these included the invention of brake lining; after some longer downhill slopes she ordered a shoemaker to nail leather onto the brake blocks. Bertha Benz and sons finally arrived at nightfall, announcing the achievement to Karl by telegram. It had been her intention to demonstrate the feasibility of using the Benz Motorwagen for travel and to generate publicity in the manner now referred to as live marketing. Today, the event is celebrated every two years in Germany with an antique automobile rally.
In 2008, the Bertha Benz Memorial Route was officially approved as a route of the industrial heritage of mankind, because it follows Bertha Benz's tracks of the world's first long-distance journey by automobile in 1888. The public can now follow the of signposted route from Mannheim via Heidelberg to Pforzheim (Black Forest) and back. The return trip – which didn't go through Heidelberg – was along a different, slightly shorter route, as shown on the maps of the Bertha Benz Memorial Route.
Benz's Model 3 made its wide-scale debut to the world in the 1889 World's Fair in Paris; about twenty-five Motorwagens were built between 1886 and 1893.
Benz and Cie. expansion
The great demand for static internal combustion engines forced Benz to enlarge the factory in Mannheim, and in 1886 a new building located on Waldhofstrasse (operating until 1908) was added. Benz & Cie. had grown in the interim from 50 employees in 1889 to 430 in 1899.
During the last years of the nineteenth century, Benz was the largest automobile company in the world with 572 units produced in 1899.
Because of its size, in 1899, Benz & Cie. became a joint-stock company with the arrival of Friedrich von Fischer and Julius Ganß, who came aboard as members of the Board of Management. Ganß worked in the commercialization department, which is somewhat similar to marketing in contemporary corporations.
The new directors recommended that Benz should create a less expensive automobile suitable for mass production. From 1893 to 1900 Benz sold the four wheel, two seat Victoria, a two-passenger automobile with a engine, which could reach the top speed of and had a pivotal front axle operated by a roller-chained tiller for steering. The model was successful with 85 units sold in 1893, and was produced in a four-seated version with face-to-face seat benches called the "Vis-à-Vis".
From 1894 to 1902, Benz produced over 1,200 of what some consider the first mass-produced car, the Velocipede, later known as the Benz Velo. The early Velo had a 1L engine, and later a engine. giving a top speed of .